Blue braids and pink lips
by Quecksilver Eyes
Summary: That night, Audrey falls asleep and wakes up heaving, gasping for air, thinking of her mother and curses tinted green and a horned fairy who smiles, smiles, smiles in the face of misery, thinks of her father, fighting a dragon in the midst of a burning thorn hedge. She thinks of sleep and what it has done.


**_nevertheless, she persisted._**

When Mal gets out of the limousine, lips curled into a mocking smile, purple hair cut into short edges, Audrey grasps at Ben's sleeve. She smiles, too, and wraps herself tightly in sugar sweet pastel, calls him _Benny-Boo,_ like she did when they were five, like she did when he didn't look at the girl who smiles just like her mother does, whose skin isn't green but whose ears are pointed and sharp, who walks this ground as if she owned it.

 _I, too, shall bestow a gift on the child._ It's the same stance, the same silhouette, as if Ben had taken her nightmares and given them life, this girl, who smiles brighter when the daughter of the woman who poisoned her child flirts with Ben as if it was a game and Audrey wants to hunch over, wants to curl tightly into herself so she never has to sleep.

"I think you're wrong about them", Ben says, after lessons, carelessly laughing. "They're not their parents."

Audrey smiles and thinks of Mal's walk, head held high, fingers curled around a book she shouldn't own, hair chopped short, short, short above her ears, eyes glowing when Ben doesn't look. Your monster was a prince, she thinks. And my monster was just that, was sleep like death, was my father in shackles, my grandparents in grief, you do not, cannot see what I see when you look at her. She puts her sunglasses in her hair and pecks him on the lips. _Bye, Benny-Boo._

He _sings_ for her.

He sings for her and Audrey feels as if her heart dropped to the floor. I don't need your pity date, she says into the microphone and then she kisses Chad and Mal smiles and laughs as if she didn't take away Audrey's anchor when the world is too loud, too bright again, when sleep seems like make believe, like something she has long since given away.

Chad tries to talk her out of family day, but she shakes her head. "No", she says. "I need my grammy." She kisses her cheeks, lipstick perfect, eyelashes tightly curled. Come away from this girl, she thinks and Mal flashes her eyes, sickly green and bright and magical and Jay stands behind her, as if she was something valuable to protect.

"My daughter was raised by fairies", grammy says and Audrey tries not to think of blankets, blue and pink and her father, hunched over a casket like bed, tries not to think of sleep and spindles and three little flitting things who mean for all that is good in this world.

After the coronation, after Mal has chosen _good,_ eyes glowing, fingers tightly wrapped around a wand, collar high around her hair, after Maleficent suddenly stood in their midst, Audrey takes a gap year. She takes her mustang and drives until she reaches the woods by the sea, until the air tastes salty and the cold, mouldy taste of fae has left her mouth, until she can curl up in the little cottage her mother was raised in, and cry.

You shouldn't go alone, her father had said and she had laughed, sweetly, wonderfully. "I won't die", she'd said and given him a kiss on the cheek. "I love you". She looks in the little mirror on the wall now, looks at her skin and her eyes and her hair and traces the lines of her mother's voice, her father's bravery. Sometimes she thinks her mother's aunts have blessed her too, with hair that always falls just right, with eyes, big and dark. Sometimes she thinks it's just the residue magic in her mother's body. She opens the knot keeping her hair tightly curled around itself and lets it fall freely on her shoulders. "You look so much like your mother sometimes", her father said, when she had first worn it like this after years of ponytails and buns and restriction, "you will be a beautiful woman one day." Audrey doesn't mention that she is older now than her mother was when she fell to the cold stone floor, clad in silk for the first time in her life.

She sweeps the floors, untangles the cobwebs and opens the windows. A bird sits on a nearby branch and chirps at her. She wipes the sweat off her forehead and hums a tune. The bird flies away.

No one has lived here since she was born and the roof is leaking when it rains but Audrey can't find it in herself to mind, at least there is something to do but think about the glow in Ben's eyes and the curl of Mal's smile and the song he dedicated to just her when he kissed Audrey just an half hour before and told her he loved her. Audrey sweeps and mops and rearranges the furniture so she doesn't think of her mother's bare feet every time a bird chirps.

After a few weeks, that gets boring, so she closes all the windows and locks the door and gets into her mustang. The man at the gas station smiles at her as she hands him the 9 dollars the vodka costs. She's sure he recognizes her, hair loose and curled on her shoulders, lips stretched into a cherry red smile, but he just hands her the bottle and her change and her smile stretches a little more. Thank you, it says, and for a second, she thinks, she means it.

Chad, who she called and told to _come here now, I don't care what it is you're doing tonight, I don't care what you're wearing, but, please, come here_ , throws his car door closed and hugs her tightly and she breathes into him and she doesn't cry. Instead she raises the bottle and Chad smirks.

They sit at the shore, Audrey's head on his shoulder, his cape tickling in her nose. "Is that the island?", Chad asks and Audrey lifts her head and looks at the pile of land surrounded by thick fog. "Yes", she says. "I think it is." They start talking about school gossip.

Later, when Chad is asleep in the cottage and the moon is too bright and Audrey feels like she might see a horned fairy in the shadows, she walks to the beach, barefoot, hair open in curled lines she inherited from her mother. The water is warm against her feet and she throws her head back and sighs when something washes ashore. She immediately pulls her feet out of the waves.

There's blue tentacles and blue braids and dark skin and Audrey turns her around until her mouth is free of water and braids and algae. Her chest moves so slightly it might as well not have moved at all and Audrey thinks of her mother, red lips and blonde curls and chest still, barely moving. When she leans down to check the girl's pulse, suddenly there's a hand around her wrist and a wet body above hers and teeth bared. "Oh", Audrey says and cocks her head. "You're alive."

Her pink dress clings to her legs and there's a stone in the sand right where her shoulder blades are, but she doesn't move. Instead, she looks up into dark eyes and doesn't struggle.

"So", she says, when the girl has realised that there are no knives strapped to her thighs and the snarl has lessened somewhat. "What's your name?"

She throws her an ugly look and curls one of her tentacles around her legs. "I could kill you", she says and there's a desperate tilt to her voice, almost a sob. "Yes", Audrey says and shrugs. "But you look like you need to talk to someone, first." The girl laughs, almost a bark, sharp and cold. "I don't need your pity", she says and Audrey nods. "Fair enough", she says. "Kill me, then."

The tentacles around her legs and the hand around her wrist loosen and Audrey gets up and walks back to the cottage, angry red marks on her thighs.

"There's been an emergency", Chad says when she gets there. He's already half dressed, his cape discarded on the floor. "Apparently, someone grew tentacles." He doesn't say more than that, but in the morning, Audrey calls Lonnie, who tells her about Uma and forwards a hello from Jay. She hangs up.

When the birds stop singing quite so loudly and Audrey feels like maybe, the walls are going to crush her, she walks to the beach again, barefoot, hair pulled tightly into a braid. Uma sits on the shore where the waves meet the sand, her tentacles covered in water, her torso dry. Her blue braids fall to her waist and she stares at the island. Audrey gathers her dress with one hand and sits down next to her, burying her feet in the sand.

"Mal's a bitch", she says and Uma snorts.

"Leave me alone", she says and Audrey nods and gets up. "If you wanna talk", she says. "Tell me."

A week later, there's a knock at her door and when she opens it, there's Uma, water dripping from her braids, tentacles curled around the cobblestones. "Come in", she says.

Uma stares at her tea, stirring it. "He picked four of us." Audrey sits down on the chair and takes a sip. "He picked four of us and left the rest to rot and she has the audacity to bleach the island out of her hair."

Audrey hums. "I'm sorry", she says and Uma looks at her, head tilted. "For what it's worth."

So, they talk, over an entire teapot, talk about shrimp and boyfriends and spells and wickedness and hurt and tears, talk until Uma's tentacles start to crack. Audrey helps her back to the sea and they sit down on the shore, soaking Uma's tentacles and Audrey's legs and talk even more.

That night, Audrey falls asleep and wakes up heaving, gasping for air, thinking of her mother and curses tinted green and a horned fairy who smiles, smiles, smiles in the face of misery, thinks of her father, fighting a dragon in the midst of a burning thorn hedge. She thinks of sleep and what it has done.

So she gets up, on shaking legs and takes another sleeping pill. "You'll need it", her father had said when she was eight and asked why Ben didn't need to take medicine to sleep. "Some things get passed on."

When she wakes up again, hours after, Uma sits in the kitchen and watches a flock of birds through the window. "I've never seen birds", she says and Audrey takes her outside and tells her the names of every bird flying by. In return, Uma talks about the isle, about her crew and her boys and the hunger in the pits of all their stomachs. She calls Audrey _princess_ and for the first time, it doesn't sound like a title or an insult. Audrey smiles and tells Uma about the pills.

"It never really went away", she says. "The curse. It sleeps in her bones and when she sleeps too deeply, she wakes up screaming. And I inherited it." Uma cocks her head, torso wrapped in one of Audrey's jumpers because her gown was starting to get filthy.

"She's a lot like her mother", she says. "She doesn't want to be, sometimes, but she is."

Audrey puts her head on Uma's shoulder. "I'm sorry", she says. Uma hums.

"Do you want to go back?", she asks, after describing the woodpecker's breeding habits. "Back home on the island?" She takes her head off Uma's shoulder and Uma's tentacles curl around the legs of her chair. "No", she says. "I want them free, not go back to a prison."

Audrey nods. "I know where the wand is", she says. "I can tell you."

Uma stares at her and Audrey smiles. "If you let me help you." She thinks of Ben, who never apologized, of Mal, who smiled, smiled, smiled and of the island, that is the reason, is the root of all things wrong in her world.

Weeks after, after Uma snatched the wand from the museum, after she dropped the barrier and freed all the children, when Audrey stands at the beach next to Uma, when they watch a ship anchor, Uma kisses her and Audrey's hands curl around her waist.


End file.
